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“Okay, you hang tight. It should only be about fifteen minutes,” I tell him as I tie my robe and leave the room to find Anthony.
Mandy
Finally, a bit of good news, I think as I pull back the comforter and slip into bed. Trey is right, these sheets are pretty comfortable, but after the day I’ve had almost any bed would do. The tension in my back begins to ease as I stretch out my legs and roll onto my side, hugging a pillow. I hear Anthony and Trey talking in the other room, but I need to close my burning eyes. I’ve had enough excitement for one day.
“Anthony is going to pick him up,” Trey whispers as he crawls in behind me. “He’s bringing him back here, so we’ll be able to find out more in the morning.” He slips his hand along the curve of my hip and the heat instantly radiates into my skin.
“I love how warm your hands are,” I whisper, turning to give him a kiss. “They instantly make me feel warm all over.”
“I’m glad you like them,” he replies, sliding his other hand under me and pulling me closer. “I don’t understand how I can feel so close to you. It’s only been a few weeks.”
“I don’t know either,” I admit. “I think we must have been connected in a previous life or something.”
Trey grows quiet and all I hear is his slow, consistent breathing against the back of my neck. I can’t help but wonder what our lives will be like once all of this chaos has passed. Will we still feel this close? Hopefully, he won’t find me boring. My life was incredibly dull prior to the day I first stepped onto his airplane. My mind immediately tries to project what our lives will look like. The house on the ocean-side cliff just south of San Francisco where the dog comes running to greet me as I pull up in my shiny black Tesla Roadster. I’m standing out on the terrace as Trey arrives, his personal helicopter touching down on the helipad in the back yard. I giggle to myself as I realize my imagination is once again putting the cart way ahead of the horse. I really need some sleep.
Chapter 7
Mandy
I awaken to the sound of a spirited conversation in the next room. Glancing at the empty space on the bed next to me, I realize that Trey has snuck off. At least he left my luggage sitting at the foot of the bed. Damn, I don’t want to miss anything. I do a quick stretch, accompanied by a big yawn and roll out of bed. I pull a pair of yoga pants and a matching top out my bag, wanting to get dressed quickly and get in on the conversation. I glance in the mirror and after debating with myself for a couple seconds I grab a tie and throw my hair into a ponytail. This will have to do for now.
“It all started about eight months ago,” Nolan is telling the guys as I enter the room. “That’s when Bill first mentioned that he was thinking about putting together an investor group to buy Firefly Media and take it private.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head obviously feeling a wave of emotions. “Of course I was totally onboard, all I wanted was to take over the role of host on the TV show. Everyone knows Tommy as a result of the exposure he has gotten. I thought it would be a win / win for all of us.”
“So what went wrong?” Anthony asks, scrawling things down on a notepad.
“Everything, basically.” He takes a deep breath and I notice tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “It was too big of a deal for the number of investors we had involved. It stretched everyone to the brink, so there was no margin for error.”
“That’s not the way to set things up,” Trey immediately responds. “I learned that lesson with a couple Biotech companies. If you are undercapitalized, more things will go wrong than you can possibly imagine.”
“And that’s exactly what happened,” Nolan begins to tell a story of failure. “The deal took longer than expected to close, two key investors backed out and that lead to even more stress on the rest of us,” he continues to explain. “Bill ended up leveraging everything he had.”
“Why was Tyler claiming that Tommy was a fraud?” Trey asks him, obviously wanting to find a connection to what has been going on.
“Once our accountants started looking into the books at the portfolio companies, the numbers didn’t add up,” Nolan replies, shaking his head. “Tommy told Bill not to worry, that he was going to make everything right. At that point we simply wanted out of the deal, but that was no longer an option. Tommy owed a ton of money to lots of different people, so he basically told us it was gone.”
“How was Carly Snow involved?” Anthony asks, flipping to a new page in his notebook.
